


Nothing Changes but the Faces, the Names, and the Trends

by BrownieFox



Series: If At First You Don't Succeed [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Sam POV, Stabbing, Time Travel AU, Time Travel Fix It, daily life, let sam be a teen, magic the gathering mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:01:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29193480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrownieFox/pseuds/BrownieFox
Summary: The more-or-less daily life Sam Winchester during his time in Sioux Falls after Dean and John have left to take care of the Seals.
Relationships: Bobby Singer & Sam Winchester, Ruby & Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester & Nerd Ocs
Series: If At First You Don't Succeed [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1364314
Comments: 1
Kudos: 41





	Nothing Changes but the Faces, the Names, and the Trends

_A hundred birds taking flight._

_An impossible light._

_More darkness than a human eye could possibly fathom._

_And then the world is alive again._

_The pain in his chest, in his heart, however, is more painful than a broken arm, more painful than a terminal illness, more painful than death._

_Sam opens his mouth and screams his anguish up to the sky._

oOo

Weird nightmares had become the name of the game. Sam wasn’t surprised. It was really just a matter of time before all that monster-fighting started turning into PTSD and such. Still, a part of Sam had thought he’d be over the nightmares. But no, in the past few months they’d returned with a renewed vigor, like in the wake left by the demon-curse nightmares these other ones had been able to rise up and flourish. 

At least he could always rely on his alarm clock to wake him up when they started to get bad. The scream threatened to continue on to the real world today as he jolted up, heart pounding with that deep ache that steadily faded as he remembered where he was. 

And then routine began. 

Wake up at 5:45 a.m. The bed on the other side of the room would be empty. It’d been empty for going-on a month now. Still, a few weeks of a lonely bed room didn’t seem able to get rid of a life-time of expecting somebody to be there. 

Get dressed. Even with a decent closet, now that he lived at Bobby’s, Sam tended to wear the same three shirts, switched out with different jackets in attempts to make them look like completely new outfits. Nobody had commented on it yet. 

Eat breakfast. Some mornings, Bobby would be up before Sam, and even fewer mornings that came with him having made breakfast as well. Most of the time, Sam ended up making his own breakfast, and as he walked around the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal he’d put together lunch. Sometimes he’d make a sandwich, but more often than not it was an apple and some chips thrown into his backpack. Why make it more complicated than necessary? He’d gone without lunch plenty of times before, and bringing a lunch was more to fit in at this point than anything else. 

Brush teeth. Sam would never not be surprised by how far a tube of toothpaste suddenly seemed to stretch when it was only him using it. Not that toothpaste ever went quickly, but it was still one of a hundred ways Sam could almost physically feel the lack of Dean’s presence. Part of him wondered if this was wrong, if he should be more enjoying not being his brother’s shadow for a bit. 

The impala wasn’t here, Sam wasn’t with it, and it felt wrong. 

By that point, it was usually about 6:15. Sam would sometimes walk around the house for another fifteen minutes, double and triple checking he’d put his notes and books back, but by then he was usually out the door. It took about thirty minutes to walk to Lincoln High. 

Sioux Falls, at 6:15 in the morning during the fall, was a very dark time to be out and about. Most kids either lived closer to the school or had older siblings who could drive them. Sam himself could drive, sure, but he wasn’t in the mood to have a run in with any law enforcement. As it was, he was working on his way to getting a ‘restricted minor’s permit’, but it would be a few more months until that was a reality. And how crazy was that, that Sam was living in a place long enough that he could just, _wait,_ had the ability to just sit in a place and _wait_ the six months needed to be able to officially drive himself around. 

But Sam did not have that permit yet, and he did not have his brother here, and so he was still walking the couple miles to the school on his own. He knew, logically, that Bobby would never in a million years let any kind of monster run rampant in his town, but every morning Sam gripped his knife in his hand - out in the open, often, because who would be awake and up to see it anyway - and watched those empty and dark streets with careful eyes, ready for something to just try it. 

The library of Harrisburg High was open in the mornings, and Sam always found a corner to sit in. Here, tucked away, he could crack open his sketchbook. The things he dreamt about had this habit of rolling around his head for hours, sometimes days, after he’d dreamt them. Trying to draw them out sometimes helped. Today, the mess of wings and rings and eyes were the lines his hands seemed to insist on bringing out on the paper. 

First period started at 7:00 sharp but only in the technical sense. Sam had really lucked out this semester. Both of his first classes of the day, whether from the ‘A’ days or the ‘B’ days, seemed to give a five minute grace period. Sam had never needed to use it. 

Lunch was a quiet affair. Or, well, loud for the rest of the lunch room, but quiet for Sam himself as he sat at a table, eating his apple while some kids next to him played some card game. It was called Magic, or something of the sort, but Sam found the name putting him off of it right away. He didn’t really think there was any actual magic involved, but better safe than sorry, right?

2:35 was when school got out. It was another thirty minutes to walk back to Bobby’s. Sam’s knife was safely placed into the jacket, and he let himself relax in the fact that there were people out and about now. Monsters would have to be suicidal to try something.

3:05, arrive back at Bobby’s house. Bobby was awake now. It was, of course, fall, which meant a lot of rain, and so it wasn’t rare for Bobby to be out doing his actual job of towing people out of mud and muck. Sometimes Sam would come along, but more often than not he’d stay at the house. From there it was often homework for the remaining hours of the day, interspersed with a bit more drawing, doing some research, and on some rare occasions playing host to a Hunter who was passing through. 

There was nobody today, and Sam found himself out and walking among the cars, barefoot for the sole reason that he was old enough to make the decision and Bobby wasn’t around at the moment to tell him to wear shoes, and he was careful enough not to let his feet get sliced up. There was a mostly intact car, far enough in, that it was like a secret room all on its own. 

Dinner was around 6:00, but that wasn’t a set in stone thing. Sometimes Bobby would make something, sometimes Sam would try his hand at a dish, and sometimes it was just sort of a ‘forage the cupboards for something edible’ kind of deal. Sam had no problem with any of these options, but he did miss those three months when Dean had been here too. Dean liked to cook. 

There was something comfortably mundane about the three-to-four hours between dinner and when Sam usually went to bed. Homework was finished up wherever Bobby was frequenting. Sometimes that was doing more lore research at the kitchen table or in the living room, sometimes that was in the garage working on a car. The sun would be set, the only light coming from the big bulbs dangling overhead, and at random moments Bobby would ask for Sam’s help, needing a hand with something or other. 

Then, Sam would head back up to his room. Some rare rare _rare_ nights, nights where Bobby had had a few beers too many and a few minutes from being a blubbery mess, he’d insist on Sam going over to him before he headed off to bed and he’d plant a kiss to Sam’s forehead. Sam had no idea if Bobby ever remembered doing that in the morning or not. He never asked.

5:45. Alarm goes off. Rinse and repeat.

oOo

_There’s a girl with short brown hair and green eyes._

_“We love you.”_

_The words echo from an adult who stands in a doorway, pressed up against a man, both with red-rimmed eyes from crying._

_The girl has a backpack on and a cardboard box in her arms._

_“Do you?”_

_The adults don’t answer._

oOo

“Is this spot taken?” 

Sam flinched badly, pencil clattering out of his hand and falling to the floor of the library. He blinked for a moment, reminding himself forcefully that he was at school, so pulling his knife out would be severely frowned upon. He looked up, at the girl almost towering over her. Not that that was much of a feat, considering he was sitting on the floor in a corner of the library. 

“Not… technically?” Sam decided. It was the _floor,_ there wasn’t really a ‘spot’ that could be claimed.

“What are you drawing?” She asked, now that she was sitting next to him, legs crossed and looking at his sketchbook. Sam patted the ground where he thought he’d dropped his pencil but came up empty handed. The girl offered it to him, having apparently picked it up before him, and he thanked her.

“Oh, uh, just a hand.” Sam very much wanted to snap his sketchbook shut, but the girl was already here, and he hadn’t gotten very far in the current picture anyway. Hands were hard to draw, but he was making a fairly good attempt if he did say so himself. It reached forward, incomplete fingers yearning to grab the balls of smoke that didn’t yet exist on the page. Even just thinking about them, he swore he could smell the rotten-egg stench that the image always seemed to conjure. 

“You’re the new kid from Singer’s right?” The girl asked. She was a pretty girl, with long black hair in a loose braid and deep brown eyes, but skin that was almost painfully pale. 

“I wouldn't say new, exactly.” Sam hedged. He’d been here, what, four months? The entirety of the school year thus far. 

“Still, nobody knew Singer had family.” The girl pressed.

“Well, he does.” Sam shifted uncomfortably. 

“Sorry, sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. God, I’m bad at this. I’m Melissa.” Melissa stuck her hand out and Sam, with a bit of reluctance, shook it. 

“Sam.” He offered, not completely sure whether she’d already known that or not.

“Sam.” Melissa repeated. She smiled, pretty teeth straight and white in a way only somebody who’d had braces when they were younger could achieve, the envy of all the students who had to go through the torture now. No one in Sam’s family cared enough about appearances to even consider braces as anything more than a joke. “Sam Singer.”

“Uh, Winchester, actually. Sam Winchester.” He corrected. 

Before anything else could be said, the five-minute warning bell rang, signalling for all kids who weren’t planning to skip classes that they needed to start moving. 

The two of them stood, Sam finally hiding his artwork from prying eyes. Melissa glanced up at the sky, as if looking at the sound of the bells itself. 

“I’ll see you at lunch?” She asked and was off before Sam could answer.

“Melissa.” He repeated to himself. 

oOo

Melissa, indeed, did show up during lunch, sitting next to him. The Magic card players all regarded her warily, but Sam vouched for her and they resumed their playing. The hand on his paper was now completely drawn, and he was having fun making use of the ‘softer’ pencils Jerry - one of the Magic card players who’d taken an art class last year - had lent him, the softer graphite easier to smudge around the page to get the smokey look he was going for. 

“Do you draw a lot?” Melissa asked.

“Yeah.” Sam nodded.

“It looks nice.” 

“Thanks.” 

“You’re in my geography class.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“No, that’s okay. I’m bad at names too. It’s, well, it’s been a bit of a rough few weeks, settling in again.” Melissa sighed. She reached into her backpack, pulling out a sandwich and reminding Sam he was supposed to be eating lunch as well. He’d been a little more uncaring this morning, only having an apple, but he pulled it out anyway. 

Melissa didn’t say anything else the rest of the lunch period, seemingly content to just sit there and watch Sam smear up his page, that rotten smell clinging to him like the last of the dream, as he half-listened to the sound of Jerry and Tanner’s Magic duel with commentary supplied by Alex. 

oOo

_There’s a man with golden hair and golden eyes. The air around him rings of laughter, and the corners of his eyes are crinkled as if holding in a joke._

_There’s a boy, a child, whose hair is more raw gold, eyes a tarnished penny with copper lying just beneath the green._

_The man is glowing._

_The boy is screaming._

_The woman is crying._

_“Let me in.”_

_The man - it is no man - whispers, begs, screams._

_The boy takes in a deep breath._

_And he answers-_

oOo

Melissa became a constant. Sam hadn’t realized how much he’d missed having somebody by his side until the spot Dean used to fill was gently taken by the girl. She didn’t fill it in the way that meant she’d replaced him, but more in theway that at last there was something there, someone physical and constant. 

“What’s this supposed to be?” Melissa asked, flipping through his sketchbook while Sam flipped through a few cards that Jerry, Tanner, and Alex had given him, pitying his lack of a collection. They were kind of cool. Sam liked the pictures, mostly. 

“Hm? Oh, uh, I’m not sure.” Sam admitted. Melissa was currently on the page with the little boy, wings pouring out of his back, almost unable to be contained by his form. Sam would almost think it was due to his own drawing skills, and he was sure that was part of it, but he’d been unable to stop himself from drawing more and more, unable to stop the feathers spilling out of the small child. 

“Looks kind of… angelic?”

“Are you designing new cards?” Jerry asked, leaning over and looking as well. 

“It’s nothing, just doodles.” Sam insisted. 

He wondered what the angels looked like in real life. Dean had said the one he’d met - Castiel - had just looked like a normal person. Sam had read the bible, though. They were warriors, terrifying beings. Awe-inspiring.

“Do you do demons?” Melissa flipped through the pages a bit more, coming to rest once more on the hand, reaching for the black smoke. 

“No, not really.” Sam shrugged. He hadn’t run into many demons, but the reports that Bobby got still chilled him to his core. Sam never took off the anti-possession medallion that Bobby had given him. 

“Maybe you should give them a try.”

oOo

_It’s an old barn._

_There’s fire in his veins, in his soul, burning through him._

_A syringe rests in his hand, filled with thick liquid. At first he thinks it looks black, but then he realizes it’s red, a deep dark blood red._

_There’s a man tied to a chair, weeping._

_Sam approaches._

oOo

“I didn’t see you much, those first couple months of school.” 

Sam had chosen a different, but equally secluded, corner of the library to sit in that morning, and Melissa was still sitting next to him, had found him easily enough. Sam was fine with that, more than fine.

“You don’t seem like somebody who gets to know their classmates.” Melissa pointed out.

“Well, maybe not names and stuff, but I’m pretty good with faces.” He was great with faces, he had learned how to be. 

“Well, if it helps, I wasn’t at school then.” Melissa explained. “I was in an accident during the summer, and then I was in a coma. I woke up early enough in the school year that I could just join back in with my class, but… well, I don’t know, I just sort of feel separated from them. That’s why I like you. You’re a fresh new start.” She smiled at him.

“What kind of accident was it?” Sam asked and then slapped his hand over his mouth, realizing that that probably wasn’t a great question to ask. Melissa, however, just laughed nice and bright and happy upon seeing his flustered expression. 

“Car accident. You know, you never think something’s going to happen to you until it does. But it’s okay, I’m still here, and the look on my mom and dad’s faces when they saw me, awake again?” Melissa’s eyes got a far off look to them and she gave a small laugh, shaking her head. “I wouldn’t say it was worth it, but it was a nice consolation prize.” 

“Car accidents.” Sam sighed. “I was in one a few months ago too.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t get in a coma, though.” Melissa leaned back against the bookshelf, regarding him. 

“No, but they were worried about my brother for a bit. They thought my dad was fine at first, but then his health suddenly plummeted. I wasn’t there, but they said his health just took a sudden turn for the worse.” A chill ran down Sam’s spine at the memory. He’d never been a fan of hospitals, and his family rarely went to them. And he could remember sitting in that hospital bed, waiting to get the sure sign off of a clean bill of health to run to his brother and dad’s room. 

By the time he got to Dean, his brother was awake again.

By the time he got to John, his dad was already dead.

“Oh my god, is he okay?”

“Yeah,” Sam swallowed, “Yeah he is.” The words tasted like ashes in his mouth. 

Neither Sam nor Melissa said anything the rest of the morning.

oOo

It goes to shit during a walk to school.

The sky was dark, Sam was alone, and the demons came out of nowhere.

He doesn’t recognize what they are at first. He, of course, realized that there were people around him, and that was odd for early mornings such as that, and he was always always always ready for things to take a turn for the worst, for something to be taking advantage of the dark to attack him. And yet, he found himself still caught off guard, having been lulled into that sweet sense of security from months of walking that way with no repercussion for so long.

There were two of them, a man and a woman.

“Can I help you?” Sam asked when they drew closer, grip shifting on the handle of his knife. 

“You know what, I think you can.” The man said, and his grin became something sharp and wicked. “You see, we have a bit of a problem where you’re still alive.”

Sam’s heart skipped a beat, and while his head was still processing the words his body was already moving, stabbing his knife towards the man. The man shot a hand out, and with the action Sam was flung back and away from him, through the air. He landed on a patch of grass, but the dirt underneath it was cold and hard. Sam, hwoever, was made of tougher things, was better trained than to go down that easily, and was on his feet in a second. The two were approaching him, a slow and confident pace to their steps, and he reached back, grabbing the water bottle he always carried but never drank from. 

“SAM!” All three heads turned to look at the shouted name and Sam’s heart plummeted upon seeing Melissa running towards him, hair pulled into a ponytail and swaying from side to side as she approached.

“Melissa, don’t!” Sam shouted back at her, his voice seeming too loud for the time of day, in stark contrast with it. He flicked upon the cap of his water bottle and took a few cautious steps back from the two monsters, already having an inkling of what they must be. 

“Oh, does the little boy king think he has a friend?” The female one sneered. She stepped towards Melissa while the man continued to walk towards Sam.

Sam squeezed his bottle, hitting the man right in the face and confirming his suspicions as the man screamed, reeling back and clawing at his face in a vain attempt to rid himself of the holy water. Demon then. Well, there was a reason Bobby had drilled those exorcisms with him time and again. 

It sat clunky and awkward on his tongue as he tried to recall the latin words, the flow of it familiar and yet far off. It was like trying to recall the Gettysburg Address a year after he’d been forced to memorize it, the knowledge muddled up from disuse. 

“Sam, stop, please!” 

Sam didn’t stop at first. Not until he saw Melissa, choking on black smoke just like the other two demons. And then the words halted as Sam forgot how to breathe, how to think, staring at that black smoke on Melissa’s lips. The pieces were right there, part A and part B dying to be combined into something that made a lick of sense, and yet his brain seemed to have stopped, refusing to do the math. 

Melissa recovered quickly, a knife in her hand that she plunged into the female demon’s chest. She lit up like a short-circuiting lightbulb and then fell to the ground. The male demon had gotten his bearings again too, but Sam held him off with another spray of holy water while Melissa ran up behind him and stabbed him right in the back, the same light show playing out underneath his skin and having the same result of him falling to the ground.

And then Sam sprayed the last of his holy water at Melissa.

The steam rose from her face as she cried out.

“Sam, please!” She begged. 

And Sam didn’t know what to do.

There were demons that were somehow dead in the street, and the people in the nearby houses would surely have heard the noise and soon be out to check, and his friend was- Melissa was actually a-

Sam ran.

oOo

He’d figured out how to get to the roof of the school at the beginning of the school year.

Well, no, that was a lie. Dean had figured it out and shown the way to Sammy. Sure, there was a ladder one could theoretically use, but the first half of it was missing to deter students from doing just that. No, what you needed to do was climb the tree nearby, planted in a position that was supposedly too far away to serve that purpose, but over the years had grown enough to mock the plans people make. That got you to the first level of the roof, and then the brick had a few worn-away spots you could use to scale to the second, higher roof. 

That was where Sam was when Melissa found him again. She stepped, very deliberately, into the devil’s trap Dean had put up there. There was all manner of symbols, some of them warding the school, and some of them just for kicks and giggles. The devil’s trap had originally been just for fun. Could you imagine, a demon dumb enough to try and attack in Sioux Falls?

Ha ha.

Sam was laughing so hard. 

“How long.” He said. His voice sounded hollow, defeated. 

“Sam-”

“Just tell me how long.” Sam snapped, fists shaking at his sides. He could exorcise her right now, but the words were heavy in the back of his throat, suddenly so sour and bitter.

“Since the hospital.” She admitted in a small voice, looking at Sam imploringly. 

“So the whole time.” Sam translated. Melissa nodded. Sam swore, letting himself fall to the ground and hold his head in his hands. Dammit, fuck, of course, of course the whole time. What a laugh it must’ve been, a demon right under a Hunter’s nose. 

“Sam, you have to understand-”

“Do I?” Sam snorted, all bitter and anger and sadness.

“- I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to protect you.” Melissa - the body of Melissa with a demon inside of it - implored. 

“Yeah, sure.” Sam sneered. 

“Just, please, hear me out.” Melissa begged. Sam wanted so badly to say no, no he wasn’t going to listen to her. No, he didn’t care what happened to her, why she was here. No, he didn’t feel so terribly betrayed. No, he didn’t see that face and still see his friend. 

“Fine.” Sam bit out sharply. “Fine.” 

And so she explained.

Once upon a time, she said, there had been a demon. The demon had been a Prince of Hell, one of the first demons, created and twisted at the hands of Lucifer himself. While many of the Princes had left after Lucifer was sealed in Hell, at its deepest depths, in the Cage, the Prince Azazel remained loyal to the truest King and bowed only to him. 

The time for the apocalypse drew near, and Hell had encountered a slight problem. You see, they knew that Heaven would be seeking out the Righteous Man, a man of Abel’s bloodline, to act out their will on Earth and attempt to prevent the breaking of the Seals, but Hell had no such liaison of their own. There were things, after all, that a human could do that demons and angels could not. Azazel brought that question to Lucifer, and Lucifer had devised a plan. They would have a general - nay, a human King - who would lead their army, shattering the sixty-six necessary Seals.

The candidates were selected with utmost caution and care, descendants of Cain’s bloodline, and upon turning six-months old, they were visited by Azazel himself, who ensured that their potential would be unlocked. 

“My mom…” Sam whispered, trying to blink away tears. Melissa gave him a sad smile.

“It happened to many of them, you know? If the mother interfered, she was, well…” Melissa didn’t need to explain what happened to the moms who had interrupted the Prince that night. Sam was all too familiar with the story. 

“Go on.” Sam said.

And so it was, when the time was right, the candidates would manifest their abilities and be forced to fight each other to the death, a battle royale for the crown, survival of the fittest. But… something hadn’t gone quite right. They say that Azazel, the Prince of Hell, became over-eager to get things over with, to see Lord Lucifer once more. Other say that there was something else that forced Azazel to move before he was ready, before the children - still very much children - were fit for the trial.

“It was a shit-show.” Melissa summed up. 

As many children as possible were found and forced to fight, many of them having different abilities unlocked within them, giving some what may have been false advantages. Some of the kids they were unable to take, oddly protected against demons already.

No demon seemed entirely sure what had happened at the end. 

There were a few facts, however, that were known.

  1. There had been a victor, of sorts, or a child who had killed enough other children that Azazel had decided they were good enough.
  2. The victor opened a Gate of Hell.
  3. The Gate of Hell had been closed again.
  4. The victor had disappeared.
  5. Azazel hadn’t been seen since. 



“So the sudden surge of demon sightings…” Sam blinked, the pieces falling into place.

“Yup. That’s how I got topside, you know. I passed by the victor. They hadn’t looked too well. I imagine that the forces of Hell had been too much for them to handle, in the end.” Melissa got a distant look in her eyes and then shook her head. “That’s not important, though. What’s important is you.” 

“Why you’re here.” It wasn’t a question. 

“It was well-known that Azazel had a favorite among the children, one who he believed, if set against the others, would win. But he was one of the ones who’d been warded against him.” Melissa explained. 

“Me.” Sam said, the word barely more than a breath. 

“Samuel Winchester, the would-be Boy King.” Melissa nodded.

“But why me?” Sam demanded.

“A Hunter? Who better! With your powers, you’d be unstoppable.” 

“Powers?” Sam repeated. 

“You powers. Surely you had something, right?”

Sam thought about the terrible migraines, the supposed ‘demon curse’ - had it really been curse? How much of this had Seth known? - and the dreams that had continued to plague him to that day. 

Apparently his silence was answer enough.

“If you had unlocked your full potential, Sam, no demon would be able to stand against you.” Melissa insisted. 

“So then, the demons from the morning, are they trying to get me to, what, find and fight other candidates?” Sam asked. Melissa shook her head. 

“No, that plan is wherever Azazel is. The rest of Hell has decided that you’re too dangerous to be left to your own devices. Azazel’s favorite. If left to his own devices, he would ruin everything.” And she smiled at him, hopeful.

“... how so?”

“Your powers, Sam! If you can unlock them, you’ll be unstoppable. You see, there’s a bit about the Seals that the angels love to leave out. There’s a first Seal and a Last Seal. The other sixty-four can be filled in however they’d like, but Lilith is necessary to break the Last Seal. And they know that Samuel Winchester has the power to kill her before then.” Melissa’s smile was a grin now, a proud one, as if already reveling in Sam’s victory. 

“And why are you here?” Sam’s fingernails bit into the center of his hands. 

“Because I want you to win.”

“Why?” Sam demanded, needed to know, needed to why she had strung him along like this, had played with his trust, had pretended to fall asleep on his shoulders in the library in the mornings claiming she hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before. She’d given him half-sandwiches at lunch, worried about his small meals. She’d flipped through notecards with him, helping him study.

She’d been his friend. 

“I might be a demon, Sam, but all demons were human once. And I’m still human enough to care about humanity. I know there’s nothing I can do to convince you, nothing I can do but show it through my actions. You’re a Hunter, you’re brought up to hate us, but please, Sam, with my help you could kill Lilith, you could stop the apocalypse before it’s even begun. You can bring Dean home!” 

And that was it.

Sam ran a hand down his face, the ache for his brother stronger than ever in his chest. Had they ever been apart this long? Sam didn’t think so. 

They’d come so close to stability. It’d been so wonderful. He wanted that back more than he wanted almost anything. 

“Okay.” He sighed, shoulders dropping. “Okay.” 

With a knife, he scratched out the edge of the devil’s trap. Melissa smiled at him and stepped out.

“Thank you, Sam.”

“I don’t like this.” He said, just to be on record as having said that. “I don’t- I- this is for Dean, not for you.” 

“Of course.” 

“And… I’m not calling you Melissa anymore. I never knew Melissa, I guess. I’m not going to desecrate her like that. Give me a name to call you.” Sam said. Melissa’s face was knowing and understand as she said,

“You can call me Ruby.” 

oOo

_He’s in a church._

_There’s a woman, a woman with dead white eyes whose form flickers between two different blondes._

_There’s power singing through his veins. He feels better than he’s ever felt, feels like he could kill anything, do anything._

_There’s also a pain in his chest that flickers in time with the woman, a terrible crushing dread, a terrible dark poison that leaches the triumph from him._

_He stretches his hand out._

**Author's Note:**

> Did you know Yugioh was made in like 1999 and launched in America in 2002? Did you also know that this fic takes place 1998-ish? Anyway, I wanted Sam's nerd friends to be playing yugioh, but went with Magic the Gathering instead. 
> 
> So, like most of the stuff in this fic, I don't do too indepth about it, and I realized a fic or two ago and I never explained what was happening with Sammy, so here ya go! A look at how Sam met Ruby :) It's also probably worth mentiong that this fic takes place sort of nebulously before some of the previous fics and then progresses to during/past them as time passes, but the specifics of when don't really matter so I didn't include.
> 
> Also, tell me what you guys think about the dreams!
> 
> Next time: We're going into another plot-important fic, and a (planned) three-parter! Chapter 1 - Dean and the Reaper seal 
> 
> I made a playlist for this fic if you wanted to hear some bops [Right Here :)](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4BAjHlD5f6zt9YYaBKR91S?si=HjvloA0NS1eCU7jeQ2J7Kg)


End file.
